Systems have been proposed to measure attributes of crop plants during harvesting. In particular, row crop harvesters, such as corn heads mounted on agricultural combines for harvesting corn use plant attribute sensors such as sensors for detecting the diameter or thickness of cornstalks, as well as sensors for measuring the impact of ears of corn when they are stripped from the stalk of the corn plant.
Signals from impact sensors on row crop harvesting heads such as corn heads can be electronically processed to indicate plant attributes such as the number of ears on a corn plant, the mass of each ear, the amount of seed on the ear, and crop yields.
Both impact sensors and crop thickness sensors, however, suffer from noise (i.e. spurious sensor signals) due to extraneous vibrations in the machine as well as trash from the field or from portions of other crop plants.
This noise may be large enough that an electronic control unit (ECU) receiving signals from the plant attribute sensors can erroneously interpret this noise as a plant attribute.
A co-pending application (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/712,449) addresses this problem in a system for measuring plant attributes by using a vehicle guidance sensor disposed in front of the plant attribute sensors to sense individual corn plants approaching plant attribute sensors and to establish a sensor sampling window within which signals from the plant attribute sensors are gathered for processing to determine plant attributes, and outside of which signals from the plant attribute sensors are not gathered and processed to determine plant attributes.
One problem with this arrangement is that it requires a vehicle guidance sensor to establish the sensor sampling window.
What is needed is a system that anticipates the presence of plants that does not require the use of vehicle guidance sensors. It is an object of this invention to provide such a system.